Worldwide Wednesday: Ethnobotanical Stewardship Council

My friends at Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies share this info about the Ethnobotanical Stewardship Council (ESC), a new non-profit organization dedicated to assuring the sustainable and safe use of traditional plants, and enriching the communities who work with them. They encourage you to check out their current crowdfunding campaign, now raising funds to develop safety and sustainability practices for the spiritual and therapeutic uses of ayahuasca.

PLUS: Watch the CNN original series This Life with Lisa Ling, where the CNN team travels to the Peruvian jungle along with a group of veterans in search of a treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and takes an inside look at the risk and promise of ayahuasca as a medicine. Travel for two of the veterans in the episode was made possible by a $3,500 grant from MAPS for public education about ayahuasca.

“At a time when drug policy is being reevaluated, and we can envision a time when psychedelics are available as prescription medicines,” MAPS Executive Director Rick Doblin, Ph.D., told CNN, “How ayahuasca should be handled in a regulatory context is really up in the air.”